Today's Automation News Headlines from Automation.com

June 06, 2011 - CimQuest INGEAR introduces NET.S7LINK software--a set of Visual Studio .NET class libraries for the Siemens S7 Ethernet family of programmable logic controllers (PLCs.) Users writing automation and control applications in Visual Basic .NET or Visual Studio C# can use INGEAR NET.S7LINK software to communicate easily with Siemens controllers, design custom communications and data acquisition applications, and deploy them on as many machines as they want, without paying additional license fees.

INGEAR NET.S7LINK software provides an alternative to OPC- based driver software for Visual Studio .NET developers. Unlike OPC-based middleware, NET.S7LINK software is an embedded class that provides a direct communication channel to Siemens controllers. The sensible API of NET.S7LINK provides an easy-to-use interface, which results in very fast communications without the overhead and recurring cost of OPC servers. NET.S7LINK users have unprecedented flexibility to develop their own Windows programs, system services, class libraries and ASP .NET solutions without being boxed in by OPC constraints.

Like all solutions in the INGEAR.NET software family, NET.S7LINK is a runtime free class library that simplifies building, developing, and deploying connected systems for manufacturing applications using Visual Basic .NET or Visual Studio C#. It uses only three primary classes of .NET code: one manages the PLC, one manages the data that are read from or written to that PLC, and one manages groupings of methods, properties, and events to optimize read/write operations on a collection.